My dd9 isn't nearly as good of a speller as your ds, but this is exactly what I have her do with WWE copywork/dictation and any other copywork/dictation we do (except we are using the Spelling You See marking system instead of WRTR-style markings). We are going through a formal spelling program as well, because there's still a lot for dd9 to *learn* (and we add in each new thing she learns into our copywork/dictation marking system). Basically, I think of the formal spelling program as how she *learns* all the components to spelling - phonograms and syllables and how to break apart and put together words into their syllables and sounds, along with prefixes/suffixes and how to add them to base words - and studied dictation as where she *practices* spelling and spelling analysis. Do you think your ds needs more advanced spelling tools, or do you think he already has all the tools he needs to analyze most any word that crosses his path and he just needs to practice them? Personally I'd only do a spelling program if it was teaching him something new (or if you wanted already prepared copywork/dictation, with the passages already marked for you, instead of you needing to be able to analyze the spelling yourself) - if all he needs is to practice using the knowledge he already has, then I don't know that you'd really need anything more than studied dictation using the marking system he's already learned. (And even if you were doing a formal program, I do think there's a lot of benefit in practicing with studied dictation alongside it.)

We're still in the middle of working on cursive with my lefty (dd9 has learned all the letters and is currently practicing on CCVC words - it's a slow process because she has dyslexic/dysgraphic tendencies), but I taught her a slanted hand (Smith-hand) and she naturally writes it vertically. She seems to write fairly smoothly and with fairly good form - it hasn't been a problem. Which is to say, in my limited experience, writing a slanted hand vertically with my lefty occurred naturally and was never a problem, so I'd think going with the program you like and have ought to work fine - I just wouldn't push the slant if it causes problems. (One thing I did was to practice writing with my left hand, so that I had firsthand experience of how to position the paper and my hand, and what problems tend to crop up.)

Yes, I do think that the core of SYS's approach is its "guided copywork" - copying words after you've analyzed them, so that you are guided to see (and copy) the words in logical chunks (instead of letter by letter). I *love* SYS's marking system - I use it with all the copywork/dictation that we do. I think of SYS's approach as a particular kind of prepared dictation, with the marking providing guidance and a visual cue for what to be focusing on. Regular copywork wasn't doing dd9's spelling all that much good - she wasn't taking in the spelling - but incorporating the SYS markings into it has helped her to really *see* all the bits of the words, and she has a lot more success with spelling things in dictation after she's marked and copied it (and I let her study the marked passage, pointing out potentially tricky words, right before doing the dictation). I don't think she really ever saw words as a collection of logical parts before, but as wholes, where the parts were kind of blurry. SYS's marking has brought the individual parts into focus and shown how they fit into the whole word.

A quick googling suggests it's probably because Oprah isn't just doing WW but also made a significant investment in them (bought 10% of their stock).

Different poster, but I'm quite introverted, and I was never that isolated except when I was seriously depressed. I'm generally happy on my own, but I only start actively avoiding social situations and going full-on hermit when depressed. (It's something I have to watch for - when I start dreading going places in general, it's a sign that I'm slipping into depression. And *because* I'm an introvert, it's easy to not notice the change until I wake up one day and realize I forgot what it was like to ever want to leave the house.) (I also completely and utterly neglected keeping up my home/dorm-room/apt while depressed, too. I've never been a great housekeeper, and my living spaces have always been dusty and in a state of cheerful clutteredness, so I didn't realize how *drastic* the change was till I came out of my depressed fog and realized how *huge* the different is between "hardly cleans (but sorta kinda keeps things up)" and "never cleans, never keeps anything up".) I still don't have any close friends outside the family, though. If it weren't for our church, and the visibility that comes with dh being a pastor, I'd have a rough time getting references myself. It's something to think about.

My top bit of advice is to make fastpass reservations. Also, if you have a smart phone or tablet, you can download the mydisneyexperience app, and do all sorts of things on the fly - look up ride line times, look up maps, make or change fastpass reservations.

I've been using the Abacus Adventure app ($1.99, and there's also a free trial version): https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/abacus-adventure-1/id568745401?mt=8 The instruction's not quite sufficient if you have no idea how to use an abacus (I have a basic idea and it helps me expand on the instruction for dd9), but the progression is pretty good and you can repeat levels (with different problems) as many times as you want. Whenever dd9 gets stuck, we go back several levels. Usually when we get back to the difficult level it's not so difficult anymore :). One note: if you try out the free version and like it, when you buy the paid version you have to start over from the beginning.

Learning cursive has been a slow process for my maybe-dyslexic lefty. Smith-hand is our program, but I've added a *lot* to it. The program itself teaches four strokes and then teaches letters that use similar strokes together, along with a few practice words. Moving quickly from letters to words, often with two syllables or more (some of which she couldn't spell while writing in print), was a complete no-go for dd9. I ended up moving from individual letters to phonograms (indexed a list of phonograms by Smith-hand lessons), doing about 5 a day (repeating the troublesome ones), which took about three months. Then we moved to CVC words, going through ~260 of them at 20/day, which was relatively easy practice (it was combination spelling and cursive practice - I have all the words written on flash cards in Dekodiphukan sound pictures, so it's kind of like visual dictation ;)). Now we are working through CCVC words, which has been a bit harder. I don't know when she'll move to doing all cursive - some time after we get through all the one syllable words in her old reading program and go through Spelling Through Morphographs (which I think I'm going to require her to do in cursive - we'll see how it goes). (Smith-hand is a slant hand, but I'm pretty sure she writes it mostly vertically.)

Ok, so that implies that they only store third-party sellers' stuff in Prime-equipped warehouses (which would make sense). But that brings up the question of why they have non-Prime-equipped warehouses in the first place??? ETA: I will say that I've ordered tons of stuff with Prime, including several things this Christmas, and all of them came just like they were supposed to.

Amazon's explanation doesn't make sense to me. I order things from Amazon marketplace sellers that are Prime eligible (which I figure means that the seller has paid Amazon to store and ship them), and most of them are used books, something that the seller doesn't have all that many of - in some cases, I'm pretty sure there was only one of them. (Just checked - found a Prime-eligible used copy of The Ugly Duckling where it's the only one.) And all those shipped normally and got here in two days like they are supposed to, however far the warehouse it was stored it.

That sounds like a rough situation :grouphug:. I just wanted to point out that it *is* being authentic and real to act differently around someone who dislikes you than you'd act if you were only with people who liked you. It's a different situation, and so it's natural to act differently. Don't think of it as "not acting like myself", but as "acting differently with an unfriendly audience than I do with an exclusively friendly one". From your post, that sounds like an unusual situation for you to be in (which is a good thing :)), and so it wouldn't be surprising if your automatic reactions to that situation are maybe also unusual to you - they aren't used much. If you are uncomfortable with how you currently react to being in front of an unfriendly audience, change it, but I don't think you need to react the *same* as you do while being with a friendly crowd - they just aren't the same thing, and it's natural to react differently to different situations :grouphug:. It might help to acknowledge the inherent difficulty and stress of being around someone who doesn't like you - it *is* hard, and a far different thing from them not being around. I don't think ignoring the impact of their presence and trying to act just as you would if they weren't there is the only (or best) way to be authentic. I think it's completely authentic to acknowledge to yourself that it *does* make a difference to have them around, and figure out how to act so as to minimize the impact of their presence on you and your interactions with others. You would be acting differently, but it's a different situation - why *wouldn't* you act differently? :grouphug:

IDK, I've got eye troubles as it is, and I've got little kids who are running around while I use my light (and who might look right at it) - just didn't want to risk it, kwim?

All this, although I had results in about a month of consistent use, starting in mid-Oct. (Next year I'm starting at the equinox, *before* problems start.) From what I read, 20-30min/day is sitting 12 in away from a 10,000 lux light (with the light shining down at a 15 deg angle). If you are farther away from the light, or using a less bright light, the time goes up. I recently got a lamp, and in my research I ran across the Canadian Consensus Guidelines for the Treatment of SAD, which included a discussion on the risks of ocular damage. Ultraviolet light and direct gazing at blue light (particularly an issue with halogen lights) were associated with potential eye damage, but fluorescent lamps with UV filtering were generally safe, so that was what I went with. There wasn't a lot of research on LED lights, so I avoided those, plus I wanted to avoid directly gazing into the light as much as possible, so I got a lamp that shines down, instead of one that shines up. The linked paper also had a list of which sorts of eye conditions put people at particular risk for eye damage, and recommended that those people get an ophthalmologist exam prior to starting light therapy. The four basic parameters wrt effective light treatment that the above linked paper talked about were light intensity, light wavelength, duration of daily exposure, and timing of daily exposure. Light intensity ought to be 2,500 lux or above, and the higher the lux, the less duration was needed (I got a 10,000 lux lamp, which needs a daily 30 min session to get a sufficient "dose" of light; 2,500 lux lamps require 2 hours a day). Wrt light wavelength, both broad-spectrum fluorescent lights and cool-white fluorescent lights have been shown to be effective. Timing-wise, there's debate over one morning session or a morning and evening session; I've been doing one morning session right after I get up, and it has reset my circadian rhythm some - getting up in the morning is easier now. Anyway, I got this lamp: http://www.homedepot.com/p/Unbranded-Daylight-Sky-for-Optimal-Therapy-DL200US/204497298 and I've been pleased with it so far (used it for two months now). I was starting to spiral down when I started in mid-Oct, and it's made it easier to get up in the mornings, and overall I'm feeling much more "normal" and generally *me* than I have in past winters - with this (plus exercise, eating right, and enough sleep), I've been staying on a fairly even keel and haven't had to much trouble staying productive.

When we paid for overnight delivery and Amazon failed to get it to us on time, they did automatically refund the extra shipping cost - I didn't have to contact them or complain or anything. Not great when you wanted the item enough to pay for quicker shipping, but it's better than having to fight to get the extra shipping refunded. Yesterday I ordered an item that's not estimated to get here until next Monday - a full week with Prime shipping. It was marked with "extra processing time". It's not a Christmas present, and it's something that we've been procrastinating going to the store to get for 3 months, so we probably can live with an extra week. OTOH, my sister said the Amazon stuff she bought us was supposed to be here Christmas Eve, and it arrived at 8am this morning (Enterprise truck). WRT Think Geek and their epic fail in a previous year - I wonder if they just were. not. expecting. the level of demand they got. Something similar happened to our church with our Easter egg hunt - we planned for 50-75 kids and got 200 :scared:. It was not pretty, and there were lots of unhappy people, but we had *no idea* we were going to get that many people and there wasn't all that much we could do to accommodate them on the fly. A little more success than you expected is nice, but a *lot* more success than you expected is as bad (or worse) than no success :doh.

Anything over $100 is "expensive" in my book. I don't think I've spent over $100 on anything yet (although sort of on LiPS -I got the manual used for $80 but if you count the cost of buying/making all the magnetic tiles and other materials, it probably comes out to $110). I tend to buy used or on clearance as much as possible, lots of living books, and not too much consumable stuff. The most expensive-feeling stuff I buy are new consumable workbooks; I cringe at the $90-$100 I drop every year on SM workbooks (2 wb, 2 IP, times 2 kids). For reference, my hs budget is $600/yr, and so far that is enough for curriculum, a bunch of living books, and misc supplies.

Anxiety (and depression) both provoke the "flight" response (as in fight-or-flight) - anxiety makes you want to get away from the problem any way you can. The problem is, the more you give into the anxiety - the more you avoid what's making you anxious (when avoidance doesn't make it go away for realsies) - the more anxious you are about it. IOW, the more you give into the anxiety and avoid something, the harder it becomes to eventually face it. It's far, *far* better to face it at the beginning, when it's relatively little, than it is to avoid it when it's small, because that just makes it bigger and bigger. I know for me, I think it's "no big deal" to avoid at the beginning - that there's plenty of time to get around to it and it will be just as easy or easier to do it then. Only that's the anxiety talking - it's completely, utterly *wrong* - *because* I avoided it when it was "no big deal", I *make* it a Big Deal. My dds have anxiety issues, too, and when I'm on my game, I try to deal with it by being a calm, persistent rock. I sympathize a bit - yes, it *is* hard - and I explain how avoiding it makes it worse, and I try to come alongside and help (drag) them over the initial hump. But I generally try to make sure that together we face it head-on, together - give them all the sympathy and empathy in the world, give them lots of help and scaffolding (that I try to phase out over time) - but not budge on actually *doing* it, even if just a little bit. Because as much as they beg to "do it later", letting them avoid it now is not in their best interest - because it's going to be *worse* later. (I do try hard to set them up for success - enough sleep, enough good food, regularly scheduled breaks, water and healthy snacks next to where they work - and sometimes if now is objectively not the greatest time (hungry, tired, sick, etc.), I settle for doing a small amount - just enough to get over the initial hump.) WRT to my parents and how they could have helped: My parents always emphasized, with both words and actions, that what counted was doing my best, whatever the outcome. If a C was my best, then they'd be happy with that. And that helped (over time - it took lots of repetitions to sink in ;)). But my mom has the very same perfectionist anxiety I have, and her own method of handling it is to "start something when her anxiety about not finishing overcomes her anxiety about starting". It works, for certain values of "work", but it's not the greatest, kwim? So no one ever really showed me how to handle anxiety so much as to keep going in spite of it. I ended up with a conscious "growth mindset" - if at first you don't succeed, try, try again - that failure just means you can't do it *now*, not that you can't do it *ever*. But I also had an unconscious "fixed mindset" - that I can either do it or not, and that doesn't change - that if I fail now, I'm a failure forever. (For more info re: growth/fixed mindsets: http://mindsetonline.com/whatisit/about/.) My parents definitely explicitly taught me a growth mindset. But I wonder if maybe I partly learned a fixed mindset implicitly from my mom - if she has the same tangled beliefs that I do. (I also definitely imbibed a fixed mindset from school and media depictions of "being smart" - smart was a thing you were or weren't, and there was no changing it. And I definitely thought of myself as "smart" - in fact, I defined myself by it. It was the only thing I had going for me in the outside world (or so I thought) - I wasn't pretty, wasn't athletic, wasn't popular - I was an socially and physically awkward smart kid, and smart was how everyone outside the family saw me, and how I saw myself, too. My parents and their "do your best, whatever it is" attitude was a *major* corrective to that.) WRT helping, like Chris in VA, I wished my parents would have "made" me do things, although if/when they had, I resisted every. step. of. the. way. I wanted to be able to do things, but I didn't want to do the things required to do things. But really, I needed to be *taught* how to do things - have everything broken down into *doable* steps, and then be held responsible for doing each step. If a step proved to be too much, then be walked through how to break it down into even littler steps. Basically a combination of being taught *how* to do things - to work through anxiety, to make a plan and follow through, to modify a plan instead of giving up - and then kind of being pushed to actually *do* it even when it was hard. But a sympathetic pushing, one that was flexible, that made sure tasks were doable at my current level (and modified them when they didn't work out as planned) - basically being in every way on my side, positive and loving and kind - yet not letting me give up - *because* they were on my side. ETA: Which means that the parent in question has to *have* the ability to work though the issues in question themselves, or else learn to. My mom is awesome, and taught me a lot of good things, but her handling of her anxiety is only so-so, and so she couldn't pass on any better, kwim? I've found, in trying to help my kids, I have to learn and apply the same things to myself. Because how can I walk them through dealing with anxiety if I can't deal with my own?

Perfectionism and anxiety here, too, and they *definitely* contributed to my underperforming, both because of procrastination and because of just not doing things at all. I procrastinated because I was putting off the perceived unpleasantness of the work, and my anxiety made some work seem *far* more unpleasant than it was in reality. And I *knew* that, and after every frantic all-nighter I'd tell myself that just doing the work ahead of time would be *so* much better than the stress of doing it at the last minute, yet when it came time to do the work, it seemed like so big a deal that I'd put it off again and again. Because I needed the adrenaline rush that came with doing it at the last minute to overcome the anxiety of starting. I never would have put it like that at the time - I thought I just preferred to play over doing work (and that did become a habit) - but in retrospect (and after a decade of being *aware* of my anxiety and working on it), I had help in developing that habit - there was a *reason* that work loomed large, and that was because I was anxious about it, about getting it done "right". I remember explaining, very rationally-sounding, that the reason I didn't do my homework was because I could learn without it and it was only worth 15% of my grade and I was willing to take the hit in order to not do it. Yeah, well, the reason that seemed like a good plan was because of how *bad* the homework seemed - not how bad it was in *reality*, but how bad it *seemed* - because my anxiety made it feel like a huge thing to be avoided, and my brain went right ahead and crafted a nice, rational-sounding reason to give in to the anxiety :(.

My own experience is that easy material combined with easy tasks aren't the things that kids who *want* to do well tend to skip "because boring", though (unless the volume is ridiculous, so that even a competent adult would be spending hours at it). IME, those "I *hate* them - they are so *boring*" assignments are where it's easy material combined with *hard* tasks - they *feel* hard but pointless because the material can be learned without the skill that makes the assignment hard. Sometimes what makes the task difficult isn't a skill worth cultivating (for example, where the difficulty in is hours of fiddly cutting and pasting, or coloring), but sometimes the skill is genuinely useful (the ability to summarize and condense, or the ability to delay gratification, or the ability to work without having to "feel like it" - all things I lack). Personally, I would evaluate what exactly about the assignments she skips are difficult before writing it all off as "pointless because the material can be learned without it" - a lot of study skills are pointless until they aren't - when the person hits the limit of their ability to learn without studying. I'm busy trying to learn to summarize and condense in my 30s because I never bothered to learn it "because it was pointless - I could learn the material without it". Yeah, that was only for certain values of "learn the material", and up to to a certain point of difficulty.

I was a gifted student who underperformed, and at the time I'd have explained it as laziness and "just not wanting to". I didn't like it, but I wasn't willing to take steps to change it, either. And I crashed and burned but good in college :(. But now, in retrospect, a lot of the things I didn't want to do because they were "painfully boring" - they were actually *hard* for me to do. It's not that I *couldn't* do them, but that I couldn't do them with ease and in a reasonable timeframe. And as they were usually sold as necessary in order to learn - and I could learn very well without them - I thought they were just stupid and boring. But, really, I had no trouble flying through stupid and boring *easy* things - the fact that I hated these so much because I couldn't fly through them was, in retrospect, a sign that they *weren't* all that easy for me. I was a voracious reader with a good memory, and I could integrate my knowledge on the fly during tests, and that covered up the fact that I was actually missing a lot of foundational skills. As a kid, I *loathed* the end-of-section/end-of-chapter review questions, and my brief period of just not doing work and lying to my parents about it was centered around skipping those. (I was in 4th grade, and my mom dealt with it by having me have my teacher sign off on whether I had hw or not each day. I was *really* embarrassed by that - I was a "good kid" and that was something only "bad kids" had to do. You could probably make up a sheet for your dd to write down her hw assignments on, with a space for each class, and have her go to each teacher to initial it each day (after you probably talk to them about what is going on).) If I couldn't get the answer directly from the text, word-for-word, I was mad and complained about it. I didn't realize it at the time, but summarizing a text - both finding the main point and putting that point into my own words - was a very difficult skill for me. It still is. Dd9 is doing WWE 2, and *I'm* learning from it, too. But at the time I thought those questions were just about making sure you learned and remembered those points - and I had zero trouble learning and remembering the entire text, so I thought it was pointless. Later on, I thought it was a "gifted thing" - just not having enough to think about to make the work worthwhile. But there are lots of mindless things I don't have a problem doing - because they are *easy*, or easy enough. This was the deadly combo of simple content and hard task - I loathed it so much not because it was "boring", but because it was *hard*. The task was hard enough to require serious thought, only I didn't think I "should" have to think hard, because "I already knew it". So I just loathed them and spent the bare minimum of time and effort on them. (It didn't help that no one ever *taught* me how to summarize and condense - they just gave lots of tasks that *required* that skill :-/.) As well, I didn't realize how bad my executive function skills were until recently (when I took the parent test in Smart but Scattered) - because my memory was good enough that I didn't *need* to be organized. And I work fast and well under pressure, so I let external deadlines provide the kick to get started and didn't realize how many weaknesses that covered up. Not only did it cover up my inability to make and follow my own schedules, it also covered up how *hard* some of those tasks were for me. Because when I did them in a flurry of adrenaline (often cutting several corners that didn't affect my grade but did affect my learning), I worked faster (and in some ways better) than I could do without that push. I used to think it was because "work expands to fill the time allotted", and there's some truth to that. But it's also because my skills in many areas were shaky, shakier than I knew, and they took me so long when I wasn't under pressure because I just wasn't very practiced at them. I could overcome that for a short time through the adrenaline rush of working fast and furious under a looming deadline, but they were just not fluent skills for me. I just didn't realize it because I could learn things without them, because I was able to compensate well for them. And eventually, I couldn't work at all without that adrenaline push, and it took more and more external pressure in order to feel that internal push, and that happened at the same time I hit college, with its higher demands on executive function and study skills. And thus the crash and burn. But, anyway, long story short (too late ;)), the point is that what I thought was my own *unwillingness* was actually caused in large part by my *inability*. It was just hidden, from me and everyone else, because I was able to compensate so well for my lack of foundational skills that no one had any idea I lacked them. In general, I do believe that if a person sincerely wants to do something, yet is not doing it "because laziness", they probably *can't* do it - not without an overwhelming, unsustainable amount of effort. And so they naturally avoid those tasks unless they *really* need to do them - because an extraordinary effort is reserved for extraordinary need. Somehow the effort involved in those tasks needs to be lessened - because *no one* can operate at extraordinary levels all the time. And, at least for me, that means uncovering the missing foundational skills and remediating them.

I'm getting two hair clips - nice pretty beaded ones - which I asked for (the surprise is which particular ones). (Hair jewelry is the only jewelry I wear on a regular basis ;) and it's kind of tradition for dh to get me a few new ones each Christmas :).). My mom is getting us some pampered chef spices. I love to read, but I buy myself books throughout the year, so I don't really have any to put on a list. I asked for a nice warm pair of gloves, but dh wasn't sure about buying those without me trying them on.

To me this does sound like a red flag. Does he have any other phonemic awareness difficulties? My dds both have had real problems learning to blend (along with other phonemic awareness/processing issues). The biggest thing that has helped is the Dekodiphukan (Decode-if-you-can) sound pictures. (Dekodiphukan is an out of print reading program that is available in its entirely for free online; if you have an iPad, they've put all the materials together into a set of free apps that make it *very* user friendly. I've read through the rhyming storybook that introduces all the sounds and sound pictures a dozen times with my kids - they love it and it makes learning the sound pictures effortless. This is the explanation of how to use the apps, and in what order: http://www.center.edu/iPad/Images/Sequence.pdf) I don't know what it is, but it was easier for my dds to learn to blend the sound pictures into words than to do the same with letters. Dd7 learned to blend through playing the PP train game with sound picture tiles (that I made using the free Dekodiphukan font file), over and over and over again. I have made *all* the words in her lessons (Let's Read: A Linguistic Approach - which I like because it goes very, very slowly in the beginning, working through 36 lessons of CVC words) into flashcards with sound pictures on one side and letters on the other (260-odd CVC words, and now 54 CCVC words and counting ;)). She uses them for spelling - spells from the sound picture side and then reads back to me what she wrote (my older daughter is using them for cursive practice and covert blending practice ;)). And for the first 8-10 lessons we worked through the words with the sound picture tiles, training them together a la the PP train game, before working with letter tiles (and training *those* together), before moving to reading from the book. I love those sound pictures so much I want to marry them ;) :lol: :hurray: .

It's helped my kids to make both 'b' and 'd' (and 'p') with their hands - it's a completely different thinking process from figuring out how to read/write them. Every time dd7 confuses them, I have her make the letter she sees with her hands. It's not a quick fix, but it's working over time. We've also talked about how with 'b' the stick comes first, but with 'd' the ball comes first. (And with 'p' vs 'b', for 'b' the stick points up, and for 'p' the stick points down.) And so every time she confuses them, I ask her which comes first, stick or ball. (This initially didn't work as well, because my kids write the "ball" first for both 'b' and 'd' (and 'p', too), and so they thought of first as temporally first - in which case there *still* wasn't any difference - instead of first going from left to right.) I know you've done a lot of similar things, but, from what you posted, none of them really show how 'd' and 'b' are *similar* - that they all focus on their differences, but in ways that don't really show how they relate to each other. For example, "bat before ball" and "donut before door" tell how 'b' and 'd' are respectively made, but they don't show how the "bat and ball" are related to the "donut and door" - a student might never connect those two facts together in their head. And with letters that are being confused because of their *similarity* to each other, I think it helps to understand *what* about them is similar in addition to what about them is different - how their appearance relates to each other.

I had difficulties with ordering pictures online (from a different company) where it seemed like my order was just in limbo like that, and it turned out to be issues with permissions - my dh had faxed the release form and the name on the fax didn't match the name on my order, even though the order numbers were clearly marked. I emailed on all three of the orders after three weeks in limbo and got back one "fails reading comprehension" pointless response, one response that at least sort of grasped my question but had no helpful answer, and (thank goodness) one on-point helpful response that explained the permissions issue (even though they couldn't *fix* the permissions issue).

You could try giving her nonsense words to blend - she wouldn't have heard them before and so would have to figure them out some way or another. You could also do the train game - it's what taught my dd7 to blend. It's where you write, say, 'a' and 't' on different bits of paper, set them down several inches apart, and say the sounds as you scooch them together. /a/............./t/, /a/......../t/, /a/....../t/, /a/..../t/, /a/../t/, /a/ /t/, /at/. For cvc words, you could do /sa/ and /t/. (With dd7, for 'sat', we'd train together /s/ and /a/, and then train together /sa/ and /t/.) You could also try oral blending of syllables: /in/ /cred/ /i/ /ble/ But if she hasn't been having any troubles learning to read, I wouldn't borrow trouble :grouphug:. I mean, my dds had *lots* of signs of trouble with phonemic awareness - blending is just one of them. (They were late to get rhyming, and tended to switch around or add/drop syllables in longer words, and once they had a wrong pronunciation in their head, it was extremely hard to correct, amongst others.) Learning to read hasn't gone smoothly, not from the beginning - it was never a matter of just sitting down and doing the book. I mean, if your dd moved from letter sounds to cvc words easily, if she's never given you reason to think there's a problem - there's probably not a problem :grouphug:.

Probably this - that he's blending in his head (which is a more advanced skill than blending aloud) - but it could also be a result of him reading by sight, or being able to mentally put the sounds together into a word he's heard before (which is good, but is different from being able to blend sounds together). My oldest dd learned to read through phonetic teaching despite not being able to blend - it was a combination of reading by sight and phonetic pattern matching - and she did hit a wall with reading unfamiliar multisyllable words because of it (couldn't blend the parts together, not even orally). It's one thing to learn to read without blending, and it's another thing entirely to be *unable* to blend. So in your shoes I'd play a few oral blending games to see if your ds is *able* to blend. Say the sounds of a word individually: /c/ /a/ /t/, and ask him to "say it fast" to figure out what word it is. You can also ask him to add a sound to the beginning or end of a cvc word: "add /s/ to the beginning of /lid/ - what do you get?" "add /d/ to the end of /an/ - what do you get?" If he can answer all those without blending out loud, maybe try using nonsense words, because they are by definition words he doesn't already know. ("/v/ /a/ /m/ - say it fast.") Probably he's blending in his head and doing just fine, but it's good to know if he's compensating well for not being *able* to blend. ETA: He's an auditory learner? That ups the odds that he's blending in his head instead of having problems. My dd that couldn't blend but learned to read in spite of it was *very* visual. My auditory learner who couldn't blend has had to go through a year's worth of practice of blending cvc words, and still blends aloud for unfamiliar words.